Soup Kitchen Portraits – A Volunteer’s Perspective

By Sojung Kim-McCarthy

I’m an author-illustrator by trade, and a traditionally trained artist. About 2 years into volunteering for Hope For Food, I started making mini portraits of our guests. I take photos on my phone at our community meals, and work from home using the photos as reference. The sitters get the finished original, and the scanned images and videos of the making process are posted online with permission from the sitters.

I can’t say I started making the portraits with a grand plan as it’s almost impossible to control an art process, however simple it is. All you can do is to start and see where it goes. Thankfully, everyone so far has been happy about getting a portrait done and I didn’t have to beg them to be my sitters! Some of them even came to me with their own plans in mind of how to use the finished artworks, from showing them off on social media to reconnect with their families, etc.

Like many others, I only had a vague image about the people in homelessness or food poverty until I started volunteering at Hope For Food. In my head, they were a faceless mass perpetually trapped in the difficulty they were in. But as I sit at my work table and stare at their faces for hours, I realise that they all come with different backgrounds and hopes and fears – as any other human being. It’s a great privilege to be let inside their stories and I am truly honoured for their trust. I hope the viewers can find a piece of themselves in these portraits too.

Finished portraits as well as the videos of how I made them can be viewed at https://instagram.com/soupkitchenportraits